On 20th November 2011 Andrew Marr interviewed Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude. PLEASE NOTE "THE ANDREW MARR SHOW" MUST BE CREDITED IF ANY PART OF THIS TRANSCRIPT IS USED ANDREW MARR: And so to the great dilemma over pensions and the huge strike which seems to be coming at the end of the month, the biggest one day protest for very many years. The minister at the heart of the talks is Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office Minister, whose revised offer to the unions has so far been rejected and who's under pressure from some Conservative colleagues to look again at the laws governing strikes. Mr Maude, welcome. FRANCIS MAUDE: Good morning. ANDREW MARR: Can I start by asking whether this is an on the table offer, take it or leave it; and if the strike goes ahead, whether the offer to the unions will be withdrawn? FRANCIS MAUDE: Well it's certainly not take it or leave it because there's a lot still to be sorted out. There's a lot of detail. We've got discussions going on in four different schemes and there's a lot to be sorted out. But we have said that the basics of this deal, which is a very generous offer actually, at the end of all of this the pension schemes the public sector workers have access to will be better actually than anything most people in the private sector can dream of. These are guaranteed pension levels which are inflation proofed, index linked, and people will know what they're going to get. And actually for most people in the public sector - particularly people on lower and middle incomes - they're going to be able to retire on a pension which is at least as good as they expect at the moment, and in many cases better. ANDREW MARR: It doesn't sound to me like you think there is much room for further moves on the government's part? FRANCIS MAUDE: No. We said this is as good as it gets, but there's still a great deal to discuss. There's a lot of detail to be discussed. We want to make sure that the way this is configured meets the concerns. We want particularly to protect lower paid people. We don't want people to be opting out of these schemes. We want lower paid people to have better pensions, not worse pensions. We want them to be fairer, so they're based on average earnings during your career, not on final salary, which very much favours senior people who really do very well out of this at the expense, frankly, of lower paid people. So there's a great deal still to be sorted out and we want urgently to get on with it. ANDREW MARR: And if this strike goes ahead - it's only a one day strike at this stage, but it's going to be a very grim and dramatic one, isn't it? FRANCIS MAUDE: Well we don't know what the extent of it will be. There have been a lot of ballots. They've all come out with yes votes, and that wasn't particularly surprising. But I think it's really significant that particularly the bigger unions, the turnout in those ballots has been extraordinarily low. In the case of the biggest public sector union Unison, it was only just over a quarter of the members balloted actually voted. ANDREW MARR: Yes. FRANCIS MAUDE: So when the union leaders sit with us and say this is the most important thing in a generation for their members - and I don't at all underestimate how much people care about this and they're right to do so - actually for people to … for the unions to say that this is you know an unbelievably passionate matter for most of their members is simply incorrect. ANDREW MARR: (over) So are you going to go … FRANCIS MAUDE: (over) Their members for the most part haven't voted in these ballots. ANDREW MARR: So given that, are you going to go back and look again at the legislation and put in some kind of minimum level of turnout or total turnout before a strike can be called? People have said 40 per cent of the people in a union have to vote for a strike, or maybe it should be 50 per cent or whatever it might be. FRANCIS MAUDE: Well, look, we keep these things under review obviously. You know no law is set in stone forever, but we think broadly the law works pretty well. But there have been people … ANDREW MARR: (over) So you're not looking at bringing in a new threshold. FRANCIS MAUDE: Well we keep it under review, but the CBI have made a powerful case for change; others have as well. And I have made this point to the union leaders: that if they do call out their members on strike at a time of huge fragility for our economy where actually a widespread disruptive strike would cause immense damage potentially to our economy with a lot of people losing their jobs - people who don't have access to pensions anywhere near as good as public sector workers will still have at the end of this - then actually the case for reform of the ballot laws, I think will become very pressing because actually … ANDREW MARR: It sounds to me like you have got a stick, but at the moment it's kind of in the cupboard under the stairs locked up. FRANCIS MAUDE: Well, look, I mean we're not going to … we're not jumping the gun here. We want this to work … ANDREW MARR: (over) And what about the … FRANCIS MAUDE: (over) My concern with the unions, the union leaders, is that they have jumped the gun. It's completely inappropriate and irresponsible to have balloted their members on strike action when the discussions - as Chris Keates was saying earlier - are still going on, they're very intensive, we're making good progress. And it's quite wrong to call out on strike people who have the ability to inflict damage on the economy and on other people's lives and jobs when we've still got the real prospect of reaching agreement. ANDREW MARR: (over) And if they … FRANCIS MAUDE: (over) The deal we've put on the table, the offer we've put on the table is conditional on the unions agreeing overall the outcome the new … the new scheme. ANDREW MARR: And so if they don't agree, if they go ahead with the strike, does the offer come off the table? FRANCIS MAUDE: Absolutely. I mean that is absolutely within our power to do that. We've made it clear this is not an unconditional offer and we will have the ability to withdraw it and impose something which will still meet our concerns of protecting lower paid people, of being fairer, of giving public sector staff good pension schemes, as good as any that exist anywhere. That actually we do want there to be real engagement now. The unions should not have jumped the gun. It was irresponsible. We now need to try and get this done. ANDREW MARR: And so you may impose a deal and the end of the year is pretty much the deadline? FRANCIS MAUDE: We need to get the basics sorted out by then, the real heads of agreement sorted out by then. That's absolutely crucial. ANDREW MARR: So it does sound as if we're going to go through a very tough period in industrial relations. This is only the beginning. One can understand why so many people are worried. You know they've had pay freezes and inflation's high and … FRANCIS MAUDE: (over) It's a tough life at the moment. We've been through a very tough period. The private sector has been through a very intense recession. We're now going through a public sector recession. ANDREW MARR: If we … These things are always a trial of strength. If we're going to go through a winter of discontent and a spring of discontent and large-scale public sector industrial action, is the government, is this government tough enough to see that off? FRANCIS MAUDE: I don't sense … To be honest, I don't sense any appetite among most of the union leaders to go in for protracted, prolonged industrial action. There is a sense in which they need to do something on November 30th. There's a quirk in the law which says that once you've got a ballot mandate - we don't think they should have sought it, but they have and they've got it … ANDREW MARR: (over) You have to use it by a certain time. FRANCIS MAUDE: … you have to use it within 28 days. ANDREW MARR: Okay, let's … FRANCIS MAUDE: But there are ways of doing that which actually tick the box that we've done something, we've kept the ballot mandate open, which doesn't inflict damage on the economy. And you know some of these schemes, we have got so close now to agreement that actually there's a real prospect of doing this by the end of the year and without damaging the economy and damaging people's lives - people, as I say, who have no prospect of enjoying pensions as good as what public sector staff will continue to enjoy. ANDREW MARR: You're coming forward with a new scheme to help small businesses who often feel very frozen out of the big government procurement decisions where there's lots of money still to be spent. FRANCIS MAUDE: We've looked very carefully at how we do procurement. The government, public sector in this country spend a huge amount of money on buying in goods and services from outside - it's something like £230 billion a year - and we don't do it very well, frankly. We follow the European law extremely literally and have very legalistic processes, we have very big contracts. And actually we get the worst of both worlds at the moment. We don't buy very well. We exclude a lot of competitive innovative suppliers … ANDREW MARR: Yes. FRANCIS MAUDE: … who will tend to be UK based. So we actually, neither do we get good value for the taxpayer, neither do we spend the money particularly well; nor do we actually support UK businesses. France and Germany, who aren't protectionist in this respect and who follow the rules rigorously, are much better at doing this, so we're drawing from their experience and from ordinary commercial practice to do this much better in future. ANDREW MARR: One of the key promises the Conservatives made both at the time of the election and at the time of the coalition agreement was that the National Health Service was going to be protected, particularly the frontline. FRANCIS MAUDE: Yuh. ANDREW MARR: The Royal College of Nursing is now saying that very, very large, tens of thousands of jobs, more jobs are going to have to go, and that these are going to involve frontline jobs, these are going to involve nurses who patients rely on. FRANCIS MAUDE: Well we hope that won't be the case. We have guaranteed that the NHS budget will grow in real terms. We're the only party - Labour didn't agree that, Labour would have cut NHS spending - and so we are committed to protecting the budget. But you know there are demands on the NHS which mean that efficiency savings need to be made, and they need to be made so far as possible not at the frontline. ANDREW MARR: So when you say you hope that's not so, are you saying that we're not going to see … FRANCIS MAUDE: (over) Well you can't absolutely guaran… ANDREW MARR: … thirty or forty or fifty thousand frontline jobs go or not? FRANCIS MAUDE: That seems to me fanciful. We've already taken out a number of managerial jobs, which doubled … The number of administrative and managerial jobs doubled under Labour. We've cut those numbers and the number of doctors employed in the NHS is increasing since the coalition government was formed. That's the way to go. We want to take money out of the back end as it were and put it into the frontline because the public are expecting good medical care and they're entitled to get it. ANDREW MARR: Plenty more to talk about, but for now thank you very much indeed. INTERVIEW ENDS
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